


like i need you

by qiankgs



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Non Idol AU, Recreational Drug Use, Tags will update as we go, a lot of hurt and not a lot of comfort, kinda church boy zhangjing, religious imagery bc why not ??, tags will update, yanjun is bad at feelings, yanjun is uh ...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 14:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18448346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qiankgs/pseuds/qiankgs
Summary: Because in a city of contradictions, there's one reason to stay alive.A ring, a guitar.





	like i need you

**Author's Note:**

> yeehaw i guess ?? normally i would post this on my main but bc its #sad i figured i'd do it here. 
> 
> anyways this is just basically another angst fic. don't really expect a super happy ending lol. i haven't got it super planned out but ?? i know the general direction it'll take. just seeing bad boy yanjun in his teasers flipped a switch in me yanno...
> 
> also i'll be bracketing potentially triggering passages [like this] and preface what triggers will be in which chapters. this first chapter has a trigger warning for recreational drug use !!

Nothing changes, but everything changes. 

Warm hands dusted in salt and kissed with callouses from years of throwing nets out to sea. A laugh like the crashing waves. Sand embedded in the small cracks of the wooden floorboards. Step, creak, step, creak. A faded yellow house on a cliff. Gentle smoke wafts from the chimney. Hushed voices and laughter. A home.

Cold hands wrapped in black gloves, hiding split knuckles and scars. Rusty fire escapes running down the sides of buildings like waterfalls. Thin walls and windows, distant car horns like a cheap version of heaven’s trumpets. Screeching brakes, biting cold. Rain against the pavement. Silence. Banging on the wall. A house. 

 

Zhangjing was born by the sea, raised on windswept beaches with sand permanently sprinkled in his hair. His mother had settled in their little seaside town and never left. She had said that she felt the sea calling her, that it made her feel closer to home.

Zhangjing isn’t sure he wants to leave.

He isn’t ready to leave the sand that hugs his toes every morning, the gentle drafts of wind that float their ways through the cracks in his window frame. The poorly paved roads and the crowded market, the salt he can taste on his tongue after a storm, the rock of a boat and the weight of a net under his hand. He isn’t sure how he’ll be able to sleep without the song of the waves to guide him. Inhale- roar, exhale- crash.

He isn’t ready to leave his mother, the woman who knows him inside and out. Isn’t ready to leave the small church he’s sung in since he could read music and the man who coached his voice into perfection. Isn’t ready to leave his friends and their weekly meetups.

Zhangjing knows life isn’t always about being ready, and that’s okay.

 

* * *

Red tail-lights glare their way in through the windows, slipping past the thin curtains hung haphazardly over the rod. For a minute the room looks like hell. A headlight peers its way in, an oscillation. Heaven, hell, heaven, hell, nothing. 

The light changes too much at night. He wouldn’t have chosen this apartment if he’d known. Blackout curtains have been long forgotten, at least until he doesn’t worry about where his next meal will come from. But the rent is cheap, the landlords don’t ask questions, and his neighbors stay out of his business. Adult life is a dream wrapped in newspaper and tied with shoelaces. 

He puts out a cigarette. Someone is moving in downstairs.

For a brief moment, he feels a flash of curiosity, but he knows better than to indulge it. He knows he won’t bother to greet them, probably won’t even remember they’ve moved in by tomorrow. 

Sometimes life isn’t about knowing things.

 

* * *

It’s been a week, Zhangjing is exhausted. 

The city is amazing, it’s full of lights and people and Zhangjing isn’t sure if it ever ends. The concerte sprawl is so much that it almost overwhelms him, all neon signs and blaring horns. There’s alleyways to dip into, shops full of tiny souvenirs and a new park every few blocks. Buildings rise up like outcroppings of rock, the roar of traffic like an incessant version of the roar of the sea in the beat between waves. 

But under the wonder, he’s filled with fear. He’s out of his depth, a country boy with everything to lose trying to make it big in the city. He’s hit with the realization of how small he is- the little boy lost in a city where there are thousands like him. Small. So, so small.

He’s found work downtown as a florist, wrapping bouquets of flowers in cellophane that flows as freely as water in the streets of the city. He greets people whose faces he forgets by the end of the day, listens to stories he folds up and slips into his heart along with the cards he slips into the ribbon. 

Night is a blur of more faces, bills thrown into a guitar case. Yelling teens, silent adults. Whispered encouragement from people who wear smiles like a new shirt they aren’t quite sure they should have on outside. Guarded and unguarded hopeful and sad. The city is filled with contradictions. 

His fingers itch to pluck at his guitar, to make music with strings instead of cutting and tying.

 

* * *

 

Exhaustion is a two-way street. 

He’s exhausted himself, but the people who deal with him become exhausted from dealing with him. Not that many people work with him anyways, his manager and last two friends are the only people who care enough to pry.

He can’t sleep. Not a rare occurrence. His eye throbs, pulsing with his heartbeat. Little waves of heat under his skin. It isn’t painful anymore, just a reminder. Pressure, release, pressure, release. He faintly registers wetness gathering at the edge of his lip, metal flowing its way onto the edge of his tongue. His knuckles have faded to a dull ache, his ribs a faint howling over the thud of his heart. The cash resting in his drawer is enough to dull the pain.

Tonight is different, but it’s the same. 

He can’t sleep, can’t make the humming of energy in his veins quiet. Can’t stop his fingers from twitching from where they rest by his sides. For a cigarette or something else, he can’t tell. 

But tonight the person downstairs in on the fire escape, their voice wafting up through the metal, through the window and into his room. It isn’t annoying, it isn’t pleasant either. It’s background noise, a distant force probing its way into his consciousness. He has half a mind to go outside and ask them to stop. But that involves talking. Involves possibly explaining why he looks like hell on legs. 

[He crushes a Xanax between his teeth, the bitter taste caking his mouth like cotton. Closes his eyes and waits for the high, the little lift that picks him up off his feet and carries him away from the buzz and into sleep.]

He falls asleep to the person’s voice, melodic and silken floating through his window with the biting city chill chasing its heels.

_ “Talking to the moon _

_ Stay up all night with my eyes open _

_ Talking to the moon _

_ Maybe you'll see the moon _

_ and talk to me.” _

**Author's Note:**

> pls fill my need for validation from internet strangers


End file.
